Review: Anna and the French Kiss

Anna is happy in Atlanta. She has a loyal best friend and a crush on her coworker at the movie theater, who is just starting to return her affection. So she's less than thrilled when her father decides to send her to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year.

But despite not speaking a word of French, Anna meets some cool new people, including the handsome Étienne St. Clair, who quickly becomes her best friend. Unfortunately, he's taken —and Anna might be, too. Will a year of romantic near misses end with the French kiss she's waiting for?

I’m still basking in the afterglow of this book. I feel like I’m floating! I feel warm, I feel HOT; I feel gooey, and liquid all at the same time. I sound like an idiot, but I just feel good. I ADORED this book. I can’t believe I’m gushing so much about a YA romance, but I can’t even believe that I feel this much about it!

Anna and the French Kiss is a book I read to fulfill a category on my Reading Challenge – a book set somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. Well, after reading this book, I want to visit Paris even more, even though I felt like I was entrenched in that world, and living it. AatFK is about a young girl from Atlanta who is sent to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year. She experiences the typical feelings associated with adolescence – isolation, doubt, fear, insecurity, and curiosity. Like most coming of age stories, this one has themes of self-discovery, but unlike most stories, Anna and the French Kiss is fresh, vibrant, and written in such a way that anyone, of any age, will enjoy this book.

The story follows Anna as she struggles to find her place in her new school, and figure out how to experience this new world, while struggling to let go of her old one. She meets new friends, and forges new relationships, as she tries to fit in as the new girl in a school where everyone already has long-formed relationships. Plus, there’s a boy (of course there’s a boy!) who makes her stomach flutter and her breath catch. Unfortunately he has a girlfriend, and Anna has someone she left at home. As the year rolls on, Anna battles with making choices that she knows will change her life, afraid to make the wrong move for fear of getting hurt.

“I wish for the thing that is best for me.”

This story sounded simple enough when I read the synopsis, but I wasn’t prepared for how it would make me feel. Stephanie Perkins has a gift and it’s magic. She made me feel the bubbly joy of being young and in love. It was intoxicating! She also made me feel the fear and uncertainly new adulthood brings. I felt the hope and terror one feels when you fall in love, I felt the rightness of finding love with your best friend.

“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?”

This is a YA novel, so the steam is pretty mild, and nothing is explicit, but I can honestly say that I felt as hot and bothered with this book as I have with my raunchiest reads. There’s something to be said about a slow burning romance filled with tension, and this one had the right amount of tension. Plus, it made me feel butterflies, which is the best feeling in the world. A simple phone conversation made my heart race, and my face hurt from smiling:

“…Our voices grow tired and we stop talking. We just keep each other company. My breath. His breath. My breath. His breath. I could never tell him, but it’s true. This is home. The two of us.”

I honestly wish I could wipe my brain and read this book again, because I know that, even though it’ll still be great, I’ll never experience the same high I got from reading this the first time. But I’ll still chase that high, because the way I felt when I finished this book is indescribable. I’m a girl who loves romance, and I’m always looking for those books that sweep me off my feet, and Anna and the French Kiss made me fly. Cheesy, I know, but I don’t care. I loved this book. LOVED.

“You’re the most incredible girl I’ve ever known. You’re gorgeous and smart, and you make me laugh like no one else can. And I can talk to you. And I know after all this I don’t deserve you, but what I’m trying to say is that I love you Anna. Very much.”